@Mary419 @Sarah977 @Mark116
None of this is new though - even the paid promotion clause has been around for some time. Airbnb has been courting and prioritising the giant corporate and institutional players for many years, while simultaneously spending hundreds of millions of dollars on marketing their illusory "live like a local" brand image and cynically using individual hosts (and latterly, long-established, often family-run, local vacation rental firms) as unwitting frontmen and stooges in their regulatory battles. They weren't even all that clandestine or subtle about it - but people just didn't want to see it.
The big problem for Airbnb though, is that many of their favoured "partners" have tens of thousands of (yes, cookie-cutter) rentals each, typically concentrated in saturated (ie the most popular/lucrative) markets, where competition is fierce. However, a number of major data analytics firms have produced reports which confirm that smaller, personally-involved hosts and property managers *far* outstrip the hands-off, absentee corporate and institutional "hosts" in terms of performance, reviews and ratings.
Consequently, if Airbnb were to play fair and reward those smaller hosts with the high visibility and the top placements in search rankings that they deserve (and have worked so hard for), then the poorly-performing, low-rated listings of their corp/inst. partners (who are often Airbnb investors too) would never get booked, would they?
It's no coincidence that experienced, superbly-rated superhosts are being suspended/delisted in droves - all day, every day - for no valid reasons at all. Not only are they surplus to Airbnb requirements, they're actually a hindrance to the listings of the mega-players getting booked. So it's in Airbnb's greater interests (and future plans) to quietly oust as many of the smaller fish as possible, by fair means or foul. And foul is clearly the option they've plumped for.